Bitllocker encrypted partitions

I was wondering if anybody had any ideas on this problem!

Right now it's causing me to half to continue using True Image 2014 through the Windows PE Environment since 2015 will not detect my partition as NTFS!

I don't use Bitlocker, so can't attempt to replicate your problem, but I'll point Acronis to this thread as perhaps something has changed in 2015.

Awesome! Thanks!

Andy I had a similar problem after mounting my older image which was encrypted with bitlocker. I tried icacls and takeown and I was unable to retrieve the profile folder. A fix would be good.

It definitely appears from your testing and my testing that something has changed in True Image 2015 with how the bitlocker partitions are being handled!

I'm having the same problem, with an added twist. When I first upgraded to ATIH 2015, it continued to recognize the Bitlocker partitions and create partition backups that were smaller than the used space on the Bitlocker encrypted partition. But my Acronis Cloud backups were failing regularly with multiple issues. After working with Acronis Support, I ended up removing Acronis Disk Doctor 12 and ATIH 2015, downloading and running the Acronis Cleanup utility, and reinstalling only ATIH 2015. The Cloud backups now work like a charm, but in my partition listing now, the file system on the Bitlocker partition is none, and the backup file created us 418GB, the full size of the partition. I have reopened my support request and will see what Acronis Support has to say on the issue.

Alright, it sounds like what you're seeing now is exactly what I'm seeing. I'm using True Image 2015 on a newly built WinPE5 image so there should be parts of the old True Image 2014 on this setup!

I'm seeing the same drive with partition type none and the full size of the drive gets backed up (basically it's falling back to sector backup.

Have you guys had a chance to look into this yet. It's currently preventing me from using the new 2015 version of Acronis True Image!

Thanks!

Kevin Lyle wrote:

I'm having the same problem, with an added twist. When I first upgraded to ATIH 2015, it continued to recognize the Bitlocker partitions and create partition backups that were smaller than the used space on the Bitlocker encrypted partition. But my Acronis Cloud backups were failing regularly with multiple issues. After working with Acronis Support, I ended up removing Acronis Disk Doctor 12 and ATIH 2015, downloading and running the Acronis Cleanup utility, and reinstalling only ATIH 2015. The Cloud backups now work like a charm, but in my partition listing now, the file system on the Bitlocker partition is none, and the backup file created us 418GB, the full size of the partition. I have reopened my support request and will see what Acronis Support has to say on the issue.

Acronis Support responded and asked that I try chkdsk /f /r to see if I had disk errors on the Bitlocker drive. I did not. I had mentioned in my original support request that as a result of it not recognizing Bitlocker and displaying a file system of none, the backup was the full size of the source drive. I guess he assumed I might be dumb enough to turn on the sector-by-sector backup on purpose despite my explanation, so he asked that I confirm it was not on. It was not.

In his reply, he never stated whether ATIH 2015 had an issue with BitLocker or not. I responded and passed along my results. Subsequently my Acronis Cloud backups started to fail again with the same Decompression Error Message, so I punted. I uninstalled 2015, ran the Acronis cleanup utility, installed 2014, deleted and recreated the backups, and all is running fine again. I think I will wait for a couple of more updates to come out before I try to install again. If Acronis Support responds with something that sounds helpful, I'll post it.

Thanks for the update! Right now I'm doing the same and just using Acronis 2014 and hoping that they'll release an update to 2015 that'll work properly!

Here is what I heard from support. I advised support I had reverted to ATIH 2014 for now, so I would not be collecting the information requested.

This seems to be an issue with Acronis True Image 2015 as it may be creating a sector by sector backup for Bitlocker encrypted drives. Therefore, we would request you to collect the below reports so that we can engage our experts to find the actual reason for this issue:

Note: We have a new update released for Acronis True Image 2015. Please update to the latest build and re-produce the issue to collect the logs.

1. Acronis system reports: It can be collected using the below article:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/48290
2. Screenshot with the size difference
3. SnapAPI logs: Here is the article to collect the logs:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/36554

Thanks Kevin,

For right now I'm just going to stay with true image 2014 as well since it's doing everything I need it to and I really do not want to mess around with this machine just for testing since it's a production system!

Acronis engineers should be able to replicate this problem on there own very easily anyway since it appears it is not working for anybody using bitlocker!

Has anybody had a chance to look into this?

I did a little further testing tonight and tried Acronis TI 2015 on a windows PE 3.1 usb stick thinking that maybe the problem could be in the newer Windows PE 5 that I was using, however the problem still seems to persist both when I boot the usb stick using legacy boot mode and using EFI.

I also verified that Acronis TI 2014 works perfectly with Windows PE 5 (32-bit).

This is bothering me since I purchased a copy of TI 2015 and for the last 4 months have been having to continue using my older version 2014!

Thanks!
Andy

I corresponded at some length with Acronis last November about the Bitlocker problem - and ran several tests under their guidance over a couple of weeks. The last e-mail I received said:

"We have already taken all the feedback and suggestions from our users and the same has been passed on to our Development team. Acronis True Image 2015 by default creates sector by sector backups for Bitlocker encrypted drives. Therefore, we would suggest you to decrypt the drive before backing up, and then encrypt it again after the backup is complete."

That's at the least pretty definitive that there is a problem unresolved!

I conclude that they have not got it right yet (Build # 6525) and am awaiting the next release - but not holding my breath!

Thanks Brian! Hopefully they'll figure out a fix for this shortly and post an update.

Decrypting and re-encrypting every-time I want to image the system isn't really practical!

Andy wrote:

Decrypting and re-encrypting every-time I want to image the system isn't really practical!

Ditto, my friend.

I have Acronis TI 2015 and this discussion really concerns me. So far, I've been doing the unencrypt-reencrypt dance (both for my drive-clone backups and my system backups). Keeping track of all these encryption keys is a pain, let alone waiting for the drive to unencrypt every time I need to do a backup, then reencrypting...

Also, my laptop has an SSD hard drive, and I can't imagine that constantly rewriting the data is good for the hardware. (And is it possible that frequent, large scale data encryption might increase the likelihood of corruption and errors? -- maybe I'm stretching it there.)

Anyway, I just aborted a backup because I'd forgotten to unencrypt the drive beforehand. I didn't want to risk problems down the line.

I am wondering though: Suppose someone DID fail to unencrypt one of his sequential system backups (i.e. he let the backup run with Bitlocker activated.)

Here's the scenario I'm envisioning:
(You can scroll down to the little summary at the bottom if you don't feel like reading my little story.)

02-15-2015: User creates a new Acronis TI "Entire PC" backup, and was careful enough to turn off Bitlocker (and let the drive finish unencrypting itself) before running it.
03-01-2015: User performs a second "Entire PC" backup in series with the first (so it only takes twenty minutes for this backup) -- and yes, he turned off his Bitlocker this time as well.
03-27-2015: User performs a third "Entire PC" maintenance backup to his existing sequence of backups, ONLY THIS TIME HE FORGETS to deactivate his Bitlocker beforehand. He is a bit worried when he realizes his oversight, but doesn't feel like aborting the backup, and figures that it will be fine if he just runs an unencpryted/non-Bitlocked backup the next time around.
04-12-2015: User performs a fourth "Entire PC" backup, right in line with the previous ones -- same external device, same settings -- and of course this time he DOES make sure to deactivate Bitlocker, just as he did on backups 1 and 2 previously.
--
Summary:
Bkp 1: No Bitlocker
Bkp 2: No Bitlocker
Bkp 3: BITLOCKER
Bkp 4: No Bitlocker
Restores system --- problems?

So, here's my question, just to be clear:
If his laptop takes a dump and he has to run a full True Image system restore, is his recovered system going to have issues (i.e. corrupt or missing data) because one of the backups (03-27-2015, the third one) was encrypted with Bitlocker?

My money says YES -- I suspect he might have to scrap backups 3 and 4 and go all the way back to 2, which means he loses over a month of work. And that stinks!

I think I might experiment with this on one of my job's old office computers.

Thanks for any thoughts or advice on this anecdotal question!

(And sorry to dig up a zombie thread -- but it's not *that* old.)

Thanks for posting, it sounds like you're running into basically the same problems I am. It appears like TI 2014 still works perfectly with encrypted volumes and it's just not practical for me to decrypt and re-encrypt the whole drive every-time I want to image it!

Hopefully Acronis will get this right with TI 2016 as so far I haven't been able to use the TI 2015 that I purchased!

I posted in another thread - https://forum.acronis.com/forum/83534 post #7 - that Anna had sent me a new SnapAPI (build 2483) in March that appears to have got over the Bitlocker problem (at least in my circumstances) with TI2015. Why Acronis have done nothing further to promulgate any solution, I don't know. I see nowhere that anyone else has tried it. Perhaps people really need to explain their position to Anna and see if it is suitable or them? Not an ideal situation, I know.

Thanks for the update and hopefully it'll help somebody, but for me it wont work as I don't like having the acronis software running all the time on my system, so I instead use the WinPE version of acronis and just restart down once a month to take a new incremental backup!

To update everybody TI 2016 seems to have resolved this problem. A WinPE 10 Acronis 2016 recovery usb stick works perfectly with Bitlocker encrypted drives.